The more we are able to repeat these positive affirmations, the more they become hardwired in our brains and in our very essence. Here are some highly effective affirmations you may choose to include in your everyday life when you feel them to be most appropriate. When you’re reciting these affirmations, it’s good to put them into your own words, into the voice that you would normally use so they resonate more with you.

I started to realize that my meaningful conversation starting cards actually spark connection. When people are asked, “What’s the biggest mistake of your life?” you cannot help but feel connected after hearing a response. Why? People being vulnerable is the key to connection. As my hero, Brene Brown, says, “Staying vulnerable is a risk we have to take if we want to experience connection.”

‘Should’ is an interesting concept. Where does it come from? How do we know what we should and shouldn’t do? Well (and I’m just taking a stab here!), most of us learn basic right and wrong from an early age. But the thing is, ‘should’ won’t always lead where I want to go. ‘Should’ won’t bring me happiness.

Comparison is an insidious, unhelpful pattern of thinking that we can often resort to when we don't feel good about ourselves. When we feel down or unsuccessful or uncomfortable in our bodies, the world can quickly become a catalogue for comparison. When it comes down to it, all I or you can do is be who we are, so why not start to actually enjoy and appreciate that?

These occasional feelings of apprehension about our future distract us from our authentic journey. What can we do when we feel this way? If this is where you are at, bring your focus back to the moment. Norman Fischer tells us, “No matter how much or how little we're doing, we're always just doing what we're doing, simply living this one moment of our lives.”

I’m talking about the fear that unfailingly comes up every single time we set out to do something expansive, something enriching that’s out of our comfort zone, and that likely even calls to us and inspires us. That’s where COURAGE comes in. Courage is the ability to meet our fear and to overcome it, to show up and take action, despite it.

In all ways, I believe this is true. At the very burning, volcanic diamond-centers of ourselves, we are complete. Enough. Multiversal. I do, however, have trouble reconciling this truth with my inherent impulse to try and improve myself constantly.

I was teetering at the edge, staring below at uncertainty; crippled by fear and exhaustion, yet knowing I must take a leap of faith. That leap was my only path now, because behind me, all I could see was a landscape painted with potholes.